The present invention relates generally to providing content, services and advertising about services by means of the Internet and, more particularly, to bringing to customers various services, content, advertising about services and affiliate links that are automatically determined to be relevant to the customer's current interest on the Internet.
Two large-scale and complementary problems have emerged in the online world. First, it is increasingly difficult for users to find the online content and services that suit their needs in real time. Second, it is increasingly difficult for online service providers to make it easy for targeted customers to find their offerings that would be useful to the customer at the current moment. Both of these problems are a function of the current size and exploding growth of the Internet. An ideal solution would allow users to focus on what they want, allow service providers to focus on what they offer, and alleviate the effort currently required on both sides to find each other.
A typical company with a presence on the Internet, makes available content or some other service at its web site where it can be accessed automatically or semi-automatically by a group of consumers or users. For example, headline news is a content-based service made available by companies like CNN, NBC, the BBC, the Associated Press, and so on. These are available “online” via traditional web browsers by users who visit the appropriate company's web site. Also book-selling is another service provided by service provider companies like Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, 1BookStreet.com, and so on, which provide for the sale of books, music and electronics. These web sites may also provide professional and customer reviews of the products.
The users interact with the services at a web site via a personal computer running a web browser application (such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator). This user might also access such services via other means, such as from a personal digital assistant (PDA), wireless digital telephone, a traditional telephone by voice commands, and so on. In addition, service providers can also introduce such services directly, such as through e-mail or instant messaging. Ultimately through any combination of these and other means, the user accesses some such service.
Some service providers aggregate services on their web site to form a “value chain,” i.e., a group of related services and content. This is done in order to capture as much of the user's attention as possible. Such value chains develop because online services are created and evolved with great speed on the Internet, and some of these service providers develop relationships with each other in complex networks based on the applicability of the service of one provider to the services of other provider. The traditional notion of a “value chain” is a path through these related services that brings a collection of items or services of value to a user. One way a user experiences a value chain is through a single trusted service provider that aggregates other relevant services, such that a complete value chain is present at that provider's site. Users can also create their own value chain ad hoc through search engines.
FIG. 1 shows a prior art navigational experience for a user by which a potential customer 10 with a personal computer running a browser uses a communications system 12 to access the Internet 14. The user makes contact with a web site 16, which may provide links to other services at that site or other sites 18 to form a value chain. For example, access to the Amazon.com site provides the customer with the following services relevant to the book purchase process:                Book search by title, author, subject, ISBN        Book excerpts        Reviews by experts        Reviews by customers        Related books listings        Book pricing and purchase capabilityBy aggregating these services, Amazon offers to its users that selection of services which it believes will likely be most relevant to its customer's goal in visiting its online bookstore. It also provides links to other web sites that Amazon believes will be of interest to all visitors to its site. This pattern of user-to-services interaction established by the web site is illustrated in the model in FIG. 2.        
In FIG. 2, also a prior art approach, the user 10, via a telecommunications line 12 connects through the Internet 14 to the preferred service provider's web site 16, i.e., Amazon.com. At the web site, the user is provided access to a number of relevant services 21-24, designated V1-V4, that compose a value chain 16. Each service 21-24 may be selected by the user by operation of his or her browser. These services can be at the site or accessed through links to other sites 25-28 which provide services, or even related value chains, e.g., A9, the service, at site 28, the value chain.
However Amazon cannot provide similar value to users in the general case, i.e., when they are not at Amazon, when they are not looking for a product Amazon sells, when they are not shopping for a product at all, and so on. In particular, there is no current notion of a value chain that is not owned and operated by a particular site-based e-business.
As another example, a consumer looking to buy a particular stock at E*Trade.com might want to see charts from BigCharts.com, SEC filings from Edgar.com, discussion forums from Yahoo.com, insider trading from InsiderTrading.com and Press, News Capsules from Bloomberg.com. In this example, no fewer than six different service providers (perhaps each with their own value chain) can add value to a user's purchasing decision or goal. In order for any of these services to add value in that decision, either the user has to know about them in advance or E*Trade has to integrate all of this content on its site. Similarly, in order for E*Trade to get access to this consumer, either the user has to know about E*Trade and decide to visit, or E*Trade has to manage affiliate relationships with the other service providers in this value chain so they will have links on their sites to E*Trade. It is difficult to negotiate, setup and manage on a real time basis such relationships.
This “web” of services as illustrated in FIG. 2, includes tremendous volumes of valuable information and services, yet users of these services are burdened with the significant difficulty of finding those select services that are complementary to their current goal. Thus, the architecture of the Internet is a significant burden to both users looking for consumer services and the providers of those products over the Internet. There is a need to address this fundamental problem by providing a way for users and service providers to find each other when and where they are most needed.
Further, online companies spend vast sums placing advertisements on the Internet, which advertisements have poor responses because they are most often viewed by a person on the Internet at a time when they are not particularly relevant to the mind set of the user at the time, i.e., the goal of the user in being on the Internet in the first place. In order to improve the situation, online retailers utilize performance based marketing methods, e.g., the affiliate marketing programs that compensate the affiliate based on performance, that is, for example the number of customers that are directed to the site from the affiliate site. However, as noted, these companies have to spend vast amounts of money and effort to ensure that the affiliate sites maintain current and up to date links, in order to use the affiliate sites as a vehicle for providing timely promotions to users. The performance of both online advertising and online affiliate marketing would increase significantly if the advertisements and the affiliate links were automatically targeted to the current interest or mind-set of the user.
Much of the online advertising industry attempts to target users based on user demographics or perceived product preference. Certain sites, e.g., major search engine sites, advertisers also attempts to target user by keyword-based targeting. However, this type of marketing does not capture the opportunity to present a product that is in-line with a user's current goal. Just because a particular consumer enjoys rock music, does not mean that at the time when they are looking to buy a computer, they have an interest in seeing an advertisement about a CD for the latest music group. Even if the user is currently searching for information within a particular general subject, that does not mean they have an interest in an advertisement about the subject that does not address their particular interest. For example, Hilton hotels might choose to advertise on an affiliate travel site in order to present their promotions to users who are planning to travel. However, if the promotion is a discount for Hilton hotels in San Francisco, and a particular user is planning to travel to Los Angeles, then there is not an exact match between the promotion and the user's goal and a potential opportunity to make a sale is lost, assuming that Hilton Hotels has a promotion for a stay in Los Angles. Thus there is a need for advertisers and affiliate sites to be able to serve contextually targeted advertisement and affiliate links to users that encompass the complete or detailed mind-set of the customer.
In addition to trying to attract new customers, online service providers also spend much of their marketing dollars in an effort to reach previous customers who like their service, but who later either forget about those services, cannot find them again, or do not appreciate that the service is relevant to their current activity. With the Internet's exploding growth it is extremely frustrating for customers to try to keep track of all the various services that are available to them and to remember which service providers they liked the most. While more modern browsers provide “Favorites” or “Bookmarks” for retaining information that allows quick access to sites, the user must 1) at the time of the visit to the site request the URL of the site to be stored 2) organize those bookmarks in such a way that they are organized optimally. Unless, the user remembers the Bookmark and recalls to use it while making a relevant search, the information can be lost. Thus, the Internet is not designed to provide ways for companies to reach prior customers at points of need and it does not facilitate alerting past customers to new services provided by the company.
As an example, take a consumer who reads a useful review on a particular computer at Cnet.com. At some later date the consumer is interested in purchasing a Compaq computer and goes to Compaq.com. The consumer would like to read a review about the computer. However, if Compaq does not have reviews or the customer does not want to rely on Compaq's reviews, and the consumer does not remember the name of the review site previously visited, Cnet.com loses the opportunity to have a repeat customer and the consumer does not get the value of reading the review. Thus there is a need for a way for companies to provide their customers with contextual, deep-navigated links back to their services when it is most relevant to the customer.
These problems that exist on the Internet also exist as a microcosm within individual organizations and enterprises. For example, many organizations, especially those relatively larger and older companies, own a variety of computer systems each of which performs a set of functions and which communicates with a number of other such computer systems. These systems are often built on heterogeneous technologies, making the collaboration among them more difficult to implement and more brittle to change once implemented. There exists prior art related to the process of creating a homogenous communication infrastructure on which these various systems can more fluidly collaborate, this in the industry is called the space of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI). However the technology solutions in the EAI space still leave an important problem unsolved: how to enable users to navigate among these many services effectively.
An example of this problem is integrating an effective customer relationship management practice into a business, especially on a large scale. Often a customer's order processing takes place in one system, billing in another, customer service in another, and new product promotions and sales calls in yet another system. The first problem is enabling these various systems to communicate, which primarily is the space of EAI technologies. The problem that remains in addition is how, for example, to enable a user entering a customer-service ticket to navigate seamlessly in real time to that customer's order history, bill-paying patterns, responses to sales solicitations, and other appropriate services in the enterprise, without overhauling all those systems as a complete EAI implementation often requires.
This invention, pertaining to a contextual communication system in general, is just as applicable to private Intranets and other proprietary technology system integrations as it is to the Internet on the whole.